Discussion for article #235591
Speaking as a 56 year old white male, we are incredible whiners if all we do all day is worry about whether there are enough TV roles for white people and become envious of all the great roles for âotherâ people.
5 Likes
The author is a pearl clutching blogger with a weak resume whining about her white status as if sheâs speaking for the white race. And she says the dumbest things:
âthe message is that the loss of black life should be understood as a net gain for white people.â
Really?
4 Likes
I just find it sad and pathetic when white folks (usually in other websites) start complaining about how theyâre so tired of hearing about race.
I guess I would be tired hearing about race too if others kept pointing out to me that folks who look like me keep treating others as beneath them on an every day basis, both consciously and unconsciously, have done so for centuries, and in many ways still do. And that I directly and indirectly benefit greatly from that⌠Or at least I would be if I had no empathy as a human being, capacity for introspection, or self awareness. SMH.
9 Likes
I donât think you understand the phrase âpearl clutchingâ. It doesnât mean âgets upset by senseless killing.â The phrase you are looking for is âminimally humanâ. Thatâs a goal you might aim for.
9 Likes
âAndreeva asks her audience to consider, though she does not quite state it outright, the cost to white people of seeing people of color on television.â
Iâve read the article, and in my opinion it does no such thing. It simply asks if the self-imposed quotas for ethnic actors have taken things too far. Considering the article appeared on Deadline, a web site devoted to Hollywoodâs âinside baseballâ it seems like a legitimate topic to cover.
The real controversy appears to have been caused by the incredibly offensive, idiotic click-bait headline that first appeared with the article and which referred to a âplague of ethnic actorsâ and which Deadline now admits did not reflect the content of the article.
Edit: and for what itâs worth, I donât think the pendulum has swung too far (easy for me to say since I donât work in Hollywood). I donât watch a whole lot of TV, but I watch enough to know that TV is waaaay more interesting these days than it was, say, 20 years ago, and that is due in part to how much more diverse it is.
9 Likes
So when a Cuban-Canadian-American Senator speaks some ridiculous nonsense like the Second Amendment exists to defend the people against government tyranny, some reporter needs to ask him whether this is the sort of tyranny he means.
2 Likes
"Rather than wonder what white people might lose if people of color win, we should start by asking why we continue to tolerate, even condone, a world where the cost of protecting whiteness is measured in real, valuable lives lost.
I think this is the message to take away from this. Not that anyone is whining but looking at history and the future with âmore questionsâ.
I am white, guess now I have slipped into the âseniorâ category since I am retired and over 65, but I do worry about the continued acceptance of violence and intolerance of those âothersâ. Also part of that worry is the day to day, although subtle, attacks on the elderly or the âgetting elderlyâ.
More and more I can see that we are really just animals, looking to mark our territories and white people in power are becoming more violent and suppressive to keep those âothersâ out of our yards. The future is worrying because when the white race becomes a minority will it pay for all the violence and brutality against others, at the hands of those others when the tables are turned. It is easy to worry for the lives and families of my grandchildren in the future.
3 Likes
Appreciate your input Rick but pearl clutching definitely fits. The author is indeed timid, sanctimonious and easily offended. âminimally humanâ " doesnât work for me.
1 Like
Lots of white people mistreat minorities. Thatâs just a fact. Thatâs why some TV programs threaten these racists: the media present minorities as people, not as dark forces that are to be feared and disrespected.
5 Likes
Actually the Senator needs to answer whether or not the second amendment is also available to people of color who want to defend themselves from police murder such as in Ferguson, MO or in South Carolina.
Or was the second amendment added to the Constitution to allow the White Southern Militias repress the African-American slaves as seems obvious. The Constitution was written to replace the Articles of Confederation because the Articles did not permit the government to establish and train a unified American military to protect the colonies from the British fleet, but the Southern slave masters feared that the government would be able to disarm the Southern militias which ran nightly patrols enforcing curfews on all African-Americans (slave or free) in the South.
8 Likes
I think you get at a critical point, CLK. American justice is particularly punitive and retaliatory. Our culture honors vigilantism and violence, our heroes are violent. I think there is a fear that we will reap what we have sown. However the answer is not more violence and more injustice, but trusting in the human capacity for forgiveness. As a nation, we have been forgiven time and time again and we will be again.
On a side note, these zero-sum thinkers who imagine that every advance for people of color is a retreat for whites seem to be missing a word from their dictionary. Synergy - and the great capacity for tremendous growth when we work together.
9 Likes
At age 75 (and white), Iâm old enough to have witnessed the advent of affirmative action in the corporate and newspaper worlds I worked in, and in the baseball business I wrote about. The zero-sum-game framework white people brought to this subject was not often nakedly expressed, but it was ever-present. Even farther in the background was â and is â the amorphous attitude that African-Americans especially and to some extent all people of color have to prove they deserve the rights and privileges white people enjoy as birthrights. Born into a culture where white supremacy suffuses its every crevice (except some athletics, jazz, and dancing), we white people accept it without thinking as a ânaturalâ order. When we perceive that order under threat, of course most of us feel threatened. In all likelihood, deeply buried in our psyches undoubtedly all of us feel threatened to one degree or another. How could it be otherwise?
8 Likes
Yeah, this is one of the great ironies of american reactionary conservatism: with their constant hand ringing and awful condescension about people not conforming to their âamericanâ way of life, they demonstrate zero qualities worth emulating to their children and immigrants. Who the fuck would want to be an american conservative, if the their most prominent figures are the hypocritical, racist, pinched-faced evil harridans on fox news?
2 Likes
The role of âRedâ in the Shawshank Redemption movie was originally written for a white actor and not Morgan Freeman. Yet when I see that movie, I can not think of anyone who could have played that role better.
2 Likes
I thought this was an interesting and well-thought out article. Thank you. Obviously, there are going to be white people who suffer from âwhite fragilityâ, as is evidenced by some of the comments above. But happily there are so many more white people that want to actually love and respect their neighbors, irrespective of color. The recent trend of shining a very public light on those scattering racists is a testament to all the decent human beings out there.
6 Likes
The âzero sum gameâ angle is interesting to think about, but this piece seems to have shoe-horned the TV article into a prewritten screed about racial injustice to give it some sort of starting and ending point. Thereâs nothing new or very compelling in the middle.
Also, as wrong as Walter Scottâs murder was, itâs a mischaracterization to say he was âfleeing for his life,â and I canât find any justification for the overstatement that white cops âseem to relishâ killing blacks. Some maturity and greater perspective should help this writer frame ideas more convincingly.
2 Likes
Sounds like your white fragility is showing.
2 Likes
To the author of the piece: I do not think anything is advanced by absurd generalizations describing what âwhite folkâ or âweâ believe. If you want to advance the causes of fairness, anti discrimination and all lives mattering, then you have to escape your own race-based narrative. Iâm someone you would describe as white, but I certainly have no fear of an increase in any other population group (other than Tea Partiers) in America. How about treating people as individuals instead of stereotypes?
2 Likes
There were many (related) reasons to replace the Articles of Confederation, of course; but Iâd stupidly never known about the southern-militia issue wrt the 2nd Amendment. Makes perfect, awful sense; yet one more lasting consequence of that sick white-supremacist slave culture.
And on your first point, while the Ted Cruzes of our world would couch it in oh-so-respectable terms, we have a historical precedent on which to base an educated guess: Governor Ronald Reagan, champion of gun control, spurred to that position by white terror of the Black Panthers asserting their right to bear arms in self-defense.
1 Like